Robert Flaherty’s first-ever Irish-language talkie Oidhche Sheanchais is to screen on Inis Mór, the Galway Film Fleadh, and the IFI.
In 1934 Flaherty brought the cast of his seminal documentary Man of Aran to London to record the film’s dialogue. He also made a second film while he was there, his first synch-sound production, Oidhche Sheanchais.
Commissioned by the Department of Education, the film was the first Irish-language talkie and Ireland’s first official state-sponsored film.
Oidhche Sheanchais disappeared soon after its release and was presumed lost until 2013, when a nitrate print was discovered in the Celtic Studies Department at Harvard University.
The print was meticulously restored by the Harvard Film Archive and will be preserved in the IFI Irish Film Archive. It will be presented by IFI National at a series of events launching in Inis Mór in July.
The film features the assembled cast of Man of Aran, together with Seáinín Tom Ó Dioráin, a renowned Aran Island storyteller, who gather around a studio hearth for a night of story and song in their native tongue.
In Galway the film will be screened alongside a series of silent Aran films from the IFI Irish Film Archive collection. These include films made by artist Sean Keating in the 1930s, and beautifully-crafted travelogues made by amateurs James O’ Carroll, Jan de Fouw and a Jesuit priest.
These films will have live musical accompaniment from Aran fiddler Deirdre Ní Chonghaile at Halla Rónáin, Kilronan, Inis Mór, on July 7 at 8.pm and at the Town Hall Theatre as part of the Galway Film Fleadh on July 8 at 4.30pm.
Oidhche Sheanchais will also be presented at the IFI, Dublin on July 9 at 6.30pm as part of a symposium of linguists, folklorists and film historians including Natasha Sumner (Harvard), Barbara Hillers (UCD); Críostóir Mac Cárthaigh (UCD), Deirdre Ní Chonghaile and Luke Gibbons (NUIM), who will discuss the significance of this remarkable find.
